Having not been to the cinema very often over the past few years – partly due to a lack of good films; partly due to the high cost; and partly due to being abroad – the past few months have been, relatively, flick-filled. My trips to the pictures have been enjoyable and getting 2 for 1 tickets is great, even if a false economy – the real cost is the pre-screening beers and dinner; and the cinema-purchased drinks and nachos. Yes, I have favoured nachos over popcorn!

The first of my trips was to see Grimsby, the Sacha Baron Cohen shock-flick. The plot and dialogue was thin, but the gross-out comedy made the film a lot of fun. Next up was 10 Cloverfield Lane. Having grown up seeing John Goodman as a comedy actor, this film was quite a departure. Conceptually, the film was very good – but the ending was bizarre and that ruined it somewhat.

Most recently I saw Captain America – Civil War. I have always enjoyed watching superhero films. However, this was not a good film; even Scarlett Johansson's mere presence in it was not enough to disguise that! Ultimately, the film was just long, slow, with tired, clichéd dialogue. The fight scenes bordered on the ludicrous and the plot was poor.

With my Meerkat Movies membership lasting another seven months, I hope to see at least a couple more films at the cinema this year… and it would be nice to think at least one of them will blow my socks off.

A much-forgotten English pop-band has returned after a hiatus extending over seven years. Embrace reached commercial success in 2006, with their two highest chart entries – one of which was England's official world cup song. And then they promptly vanished.

With a new studio album due out in April 2014 and a forthcoming tour scheduled; Embrace has preceded these events with the release of the four-track EP, Refugees. Three of the tracks won't be on the album. Each is superb.

My advice is to buy the EP now… and look forward to the album. If it maintains the standard, it could be a contender for album of the year.

The HDX is the third Kindle Fire device. The concept is simple, Amazon sells its digital content through a device it makes very little profit on. The consumer gets a higher quality piece of hardware than they can get elsewhere for the price.

Yet, at the same time the consumer had to accept some limitations. For a start the Kindles run a modified version of Android, meaning they do not have access to Google's Play Store. The difference is 120,000 available apps versus 1,000,000!

The album “I Fear a New World” is being released by Raygun Music on 2 December. A few of the songs can be heard on Soundcloud for free. These songs are interesting to listen to and I was inspired to buy the album.

The single that launches the album is called “Ghost that Burned Your House Down” – hence the Halloween link. You can view the video on YouTube. The video is very strange and contains many popular culture references.

Geoff Roberts

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